Smart Government

Being the top CIO in the U.S. federal government is like climbing atop a bucking bronco. You can have a bit of influence, you might be able to nudge things in a certain direction and you hope to be able hang on through the bumps and turns. But to a certain extent, you can't fully influence where the ride will take you. That's all part of the adventure.

When Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel stepped away from his post on Sept. 19 (to become Chief Innovation Officer U.S. Agency for International Development), he created both a hole in the top federal IT slot, and a chance for a new person to put their own unique stamp on a job that has proven to be challenging and unwieldy.

Yet, today, change is starting to happened to IT management within federal agencies. The quickening pace of cloud adoption and new mobile solutions is a big part of the reason. Thus, deep impact on IT planning could be possible for the next federal CIO, but not without a major effort. Here are 10 things that the federal government's incoming top IT executive will need to tackle.

1) Current IT security practices could be unsustainable for many agencies. The era of roll your own and monitor your own security is coming to an end. Managing all aspects of an agency's IT security, across all systems and services, is difficult in multi-cloud environments. Instead, different parts of the interconnected systems often have different security monitors. To look across all of these, security as a service is becoming one more cloud offering that agencies can consider. Threats…

The future of government innovation in services and service delivery won't necessarily be found in new technologies, but will instead come from remixing current technologies in new and interesting ways.

Anyone who drives has seen the sight - the car pulled off to the side of the road with a police car, lights flashing madly, parked in behind it. My kids play a game trying to see how many different cars they see during a road trip pulled over by police. Drivers get pulled over for a number of reasons but the most common reason is exceeding the posted speed limit. According to Statisticsbrain.com on average 112,000 people per day (yes, that is per day) receive a speeding ticket and at an average…

I wanted to take a moment and introduce myself. For those of you who don't know me, I am the "new guy" at IDC Government Insights. I joined IDC after previous stints at analyst firms like Altimeter Group and Forrester, and after spending time working at the Department of the Interior and with numerous government agencies. I also currently teach part-time at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey on disruptive technologies and foresight. You can read my more complete bio here.